Local Pickup Info
over 3 years ago – Thu, Nov 05, 2020 at 02:14:41 AM

This update is only for those that chose to do a local pickup. If that is not you, you can ignore this entirely. 

If you decide that you would like to come visit and pick up your copy of the 2021 Quest Calendar, you can do so by going into your survey link and edit your address to select your Country as "Local Pickup".

Lost your survey?

Where and When?

Petrie's Family Games @ 7681 N Union Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80920

Saturday, November 21: 4:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Find me at a table in the side room. Pick up your stuff. I'll sign your Quest Calendar and Hero Book if you'd like. Ask questions and chat with me about games, Kickstarter, whatever. Maybe we can play a game while you are there.

I might have extra copies as well but I can't guarantee it at this time.

What if I don't make it?

Things happen. If you end up not being able to make it, I will leave your copy at the store and you can pick it up there. Just talk to the person at the counter (likely Cameron - he is a cool guy) who will have a list.

If you would rather have it shipped, you can go into your survey and change your address to your shipping address. You will then need to pay for shipping.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Box Art, Forums, Shipping
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 09:25:14 PM

Shipping Update

The Quest Calendars of officially in transit to us from the manufacturer. This puts our date to begin shipping at the end of November - about where we expected and hoped for. Most of you will begin receiving your copies in the early beginning of December. Hopefully that is plenty of time to wrap up and send off any gift copies you planned on giving.

We are always warned that shipping can take longer to due to unforeseen issues on the high seas or with customs. 

The Print-and-Play version will be available in November as well.

Local Pickup : We have a small set being shipped via express that we can distribute as the local pickup option. We are finalizing those details and will dedicate an update for that info,

Box Art

Most board games put a lot of thought and creativity into the box art. It needs to stand out in stores and look great on your shelf. Well, the Quest Calendar isn't designed to sit in its box. It goes on your desk. And this one won't have a retail presence either. So we didn't focus too much on it. We didn't hire a designer to make it look great. But, we still put the time into making something we were proud of. 

Presenting.... drum roll please...

With one of the Kickstarter projects I backed, I got to watch some artwork get created during a Q&A session. I loved it for some reason. It was soothing and fun to watch. Although I wasn't able to get this done, I requested our artist, Ellen, to help facilitate such a video. Here you go. At 14MB, it may take some time to load:

Forums

We got this game submitted to Board Game Geek: Quest Calendar - The Dragon Staff of Maladoira. 

You can check out it's entry there, and converse on the forums. It will be the best place to find answers to rules questions if you have them.  We started a forum on Errata (Corrections). Yes, we embarrassingly have corrections to make already. There was a lot to learn about printing and making our first project. We certainly made a few mistakes. When other games have these, they correct them and release a new print version. We will correct any problems in the Print and Play version and for future releases of this storyline.

What is Next?

In the next updates, look for some detail on the Local Pickup option, Print-and-Play, the Laminated Hero Book, and Custom Characters.

Manufacturer Photos

More photos of the quest calendar during manufacturing:

Dice Update
over 3 years ago – Sun, Oct 04, 2020 at 12:15:58 AM

Hello Backers and pre-orderers. We have manufacturing updates on the dice and some photos to show off.

We recently informed you (update #21 on September 12th) that there were some complications with the dice colors. The size of dice we chose (itty bitty mini cute dice) didn't afford the capability of having 3 colors. Despite your vote, we had to make the decision to go with our choice of 2. We chose a combination of the 2 green colors (dark forest green and bright sea green).

Over the past few weeks, we have been working with the manufacturer to get pictures while designing these dice. We share these photos below, but unfortunately, it isn't up to the expectations we had for ourselves and set for you. 

The first picture we got back was a bit shocking. The colors didn't appear to swirl in a pleasing manner. This is also due to the size. The lack of inking in the numbers and an unpolished surface made this even more striking.

There was nothing we could do to get them to swirl better, but we were given the option to add a pearlescent powder that would give them a nice sheen that you see with many other dice. The examples looked great. 

Unlike other projects, the timing to release this product is critical. The calendar starts on January 1st so you need to have it before then. If this were any other project, we could have had more time to get samples and rework the colors. We couldn't push the schedule back for this, so, we went ahead.

The factory was busy, and we didn't get intermediate pictures. We only got a picture after they were inked and polished. This was also shockingly different.  

What happened to the dark forest green? What happened to the pearl coloring? 

Perhaps this photo had bad lighting? Here is a video that partially shows off the pearl effect. We hope the look better once they are in our hand.

It looks as though the factory chose the wrong color for the dark green. Or, perhaps the polishing and lighting shows it different here.  At this point it is too late to make changes.

All projects encounter complications of some sort. It is unavoidable and is part of the creative process. I come from a background in IT where the daily job is dealing with issues. I expected it on this project as well and was warned that it was inevitable with manufacturing. Up until recently, none of the issues affected you as customers. This one does. We are sorry. We learned an important lesson.

Here are the photos of the dice bag they will come with. 

Like all Kickstarter projects, the final product has been subject to change. But, I want you to be happy regardless. If you are unsatisfied with the look or colors of the dice, message us directly at [email protected] and we will work with you as best as we can to make sure you are satisfied. 

Charging Cards, Character Sheets, Manufacturing
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 01:07:03 PM

Charging Cards

We will be charging cards this Friday (9/25).  This is the charge for the shipping and add-ons collected through Backerkit, as well as orders from the Pre-Order store. If there is a problem with your card, BackerKit will reach out to you to update your info. If you Pre-Ordered and paid through Paypal, funds have already been collected.

Printer Friendly Character Sheets

Several of you suggested making a printer friendly version of the characters. (That is why I love the Kickstarter community). This has been done. Please check them out at www.sundialgames.com/characters (click on the black and white pictures)

Manufacturing Photos

It is exciting seeing the product getting made. I just had to share some of these. We will share more of the other items on a future post.

Character Sheets, Dice Update, and a Surprise!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 03:30:21 PM

It has been a while since the last update. We have been busy working on various things. We hope this update is as exciting for you as it was to share this info.

Character Sheets

We finally released the full Character Sheets that you will be able to download and print from home if you didn't order the Laminated Character Book.

You can find them here at:  sundialgames.com/characters 

The page is ugly now, we will make it prettier later.

Dice Update

A project like this is destined for complications. One came up in the manufacturing of the dice. Apparently, the dice are so small that having 3 colors swirled together means that sometimes a dice might be missing a color completely. So we had to scale back to 2 colors for the dice. It is disappointing, especially after having everyone vote on the colors and then learning that the vote doesn't count. I want to apologize completely for this.  Lesson learned.  

Tokens

We decided to include a new feature in the Quest Calendar. There are a lot of items the you may discover on your journey, or purchase from shops. In play testing, it was troublesome to keep track of all these on the character sheet with a pencil. 

So, we created a couple token pages at the beginning of the calendar. You cut up the tokens from these pages and use them to keep track of your loot. The back of the pages will explain what they do. We will also include downloadable versions of these on the website. Here are some examples:

Featured Artist

Today's featured artist is Ajidwiputra.